De Mani in vogelvlucht

In Greek historiography the isolated peninsula of the Mani in southern Laconia has been described as one of the bulwarks of Greek liberty, a godforsaken place where the Turk never did set his foot. That was the reason for the British adventurer, traveller and warhero Patrick Leigh Fermor to go there in the early fifties of the last century. The result was the publication in 1958 of Mani, Travels in the Southern Peloponnese. Almost half of the content, however, has nothing to do with the Mani, but describes Greek subjects in general. Moreover, Fermor saw large parts of the Mani only from the deck of a traditional caique. The aim of this article is to fill up part of the knowledge gap. The first part consists of a short history of the Mani from prehistoric times till the present and the second is an anthology of travel literature from ca. 1450 till 1850.